The Tale of the Skunk

About two weeks ago we started noticing the smell of a skunk in the house. We assumed it had sprayed outside and was just coming through the vents. After about 4 days of that, one evening it came through so potent that I was coughing and gagging. It was around 11:30pm and we were opening windows and trying to catch our breath. 

At that point we thought maybe it wasn't a skunk but actually a dead animal under the house. Lee reluctantly decided he was going to go under the house to retrieve the carcass. Heaven knows I wasn't going under there! Throughout the day, Lee was dreading doing this and decided to call our pest guy and ask if he did carcass removal. He said he did and he came by later that night. Armed with a headlamp he crawled all under the house and found nothing. He did say the smell was a live skunk and soon found it's nest kind of under/near the a/c. He also added that it was probably a pregnant skunk nesting for her babies. He said it was getting in through the opening around the bottom and going up and through it to get to it's nest. 

Well, no way on earth were we going to have a pregnant skunk under our house! 

That night we put wood all around the bottom of it, hoping to keep it out.

The next day we tossed 3 boxes of moth balls under the house. Skunks supposedly hate moth balls. Our house quickly went from skunk smell to moth ball smell. Both were awful.

While we were tossing them under our neighbor said, "What in the world are you guys doing?" Turns out he was having the same problem. We walked over to his house and found his hole. He actually called someone who told him it has been living under his house for about a year. Luckily, ours was only a new resident.

Then became the question- how do you know if a skunk is gone?? We hadn't smelled any of its spray, but perhaps it just hadn't been spraying. Maybe it was under the house giving birth. Or maybe it had relocated because of the smell. We had no idea.

A few days later Lee started doing research on moth balls and it turns out they are really hazardous to your health. The EPA has several warnings about them. So instead of continuously poisoning ourselves, he braved the crawl space again- this time armed with a better gas mask- determined to get all them out. Amy said, "Mom, I want to marry a man who is willing to go under the house!" I told her that it's a great trait!

Sweet Tyler wants to be a "fixer man" so he couldn't wait to help. We armed him with a mask and gloves and they both went under. When Lee removed the door the moth ball smell was unbearable. He only let Tyler help for a little while.

They collected over 300 moth balls!!

Lee decided to go all in and scoped where the thing was living. He found the nest and lots of poop, but it wasn't there (or he would have gotten sprayed) and several of the moth balls were in the nest. So surely the thing had moved on.

Since we knew it wasn't at home (and had no idea if it was still coming back or not) we duct taped some small holed mesh around the a/c.

I guess this was the only picture I got of the duct tape. It was getting late and it was our temporary bandaid on the problem. Our other neighbor said, "What the heck are you guys doing?" (We get that question a lot around here!)

The next morning Lee went through and screwed in the mesh all around as a more permanent fix.

Now that is sealed off and we've walked the perimeter of the house multiple times. We cannot see any other way for that thing to get back in. But we shall see. So while this seems like the end, it's really a continuing story!!